Should You Get Rid of Your Office Landline Phones?

In an interview with the NY times, Evernote’s CEO Phil Libin was asked the following question: What is unusual about your workplace?
His answer was very interesting:

“We got rid of phones in the office. Just on a whim, I thought that at every company we start, and this is the third one, we’re going to eliminate one piece of unnecessary technology. So this time it was phones. We thought, why do you really need a phone? If you have a phone at your desk, it’s just sitting there and you’re kind of encouraging people to talk on it. Everyone’s got a cellphone”

Unified Communication

It is a time-consuming situation that is equally frustrating for customers as it is for co-workers. To avoid this scenario, we resort to manual data-entry which can be even more time-consuming.

More hindering is the fact that traditional office phone conversations are impossible to integrate with any of the modern solutions businesses use. Ideally, you want to build a customized ecosystem of apps that communicate with each other. But what you end up with ,using office phones, is an important component (communication) that is completely disconnected from your app ecosystem.

Cloud Hosted Phone Integration is the solution to this problem. Unified communication refers to centralizing and integrating features like Emails, calls, CRMs and other business tools.

For example:

Set a Teamgate CRM reminder to call a customer.

Receive the reminder by SMS or Email.

Make the call through Teamgate.

Log it and archive it.

Notify teammates of the call.

Access your history to track the number of calls.

Monitor their success.

Why not forward your voicemail recordings to your email?

These tasks – all of which rely on cloud-hosted apps—are not restricted by the presence of a physical office phone and a nearby notepad. This perk is especially attractive to field workers like travelling salespeople looking for ways to avoid workflow disruptions. Moreover, the availability of call data can foster transparency and open communication within any team.

Cost and Scalability

The costs of maintaining multiple landlines, in addition to the initial installation fees, can add up quickly. Which is why small businesses that switch to cloud hosted Phone integrations “reduce the cost of their local costs by up to 40%, and save up to 90% on international call”, according totech.co.
Seamless scalability also favors Telephony Integration apps since many cloud-hosted plans offer per-minute pricing. This guarantees that resources will be allocated according to your everyday business needs. Under-used landlines and phone plans are a significant resource sink. With Telephony Integration, the barer setup requires nothing more than a headset.

Analytics

The popular quote “What can be measured can be improved” holds especially true for phone integration.
When combined with CRM, phone data is an invaluable tool for data lovers. Not only can you extract key information like duration of calls, number of calls-per-customer, response rates and conversion rates but you can also monitor how your sales-team or customer service department, for example, is progressing towards meeting their pre-set goals.

Not to forget that this acquired data provides a rich stream of inputs that can make your CRM forecasts and visualizations more accurate, thus making future decisions more informed.

Teamgate and Phone Integration

Yes, I just logged a call with Mark Zuckerburg.

Teamgate CRM supports integration with Nexmo, an API for phone services. We are also launching soon our very own Teamgate SmartDial, relying on the Twilio API.

Besides offering the features you can currently use with Nexmo integration like Browser Calls and SMS notifications, Teamgate SmartDial will include the following additions:

– Calls directly through Teamgate’s CRM.
– Missed calls will be listed and recorded on each customer’s profile.
– Unlimited storage for call records and history.
– Record call-specific notes on the customer’s profile.
– Share call notes with teammates.
– Track the number and effectiveness of calls made.

Stay tuned for Teamgate SmartDial Launch. In the meantime, why not take Teamgate for a test drive?

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Vytautas Ramanauskas

Vytautas is a marketing specialist. A writer by day and a reader by night, he is passionate about helping people in all aspects of technology, sales intelligence, online marketing, and design.
Find him on Twitter @vytautasram